Since I last posted I have been to the Hague and Amsterdam. I have also gotten my hair cut from a woman who didn't speak English, joined some clubs and had a wonderful birthday. Also I have eaten a lot of delicious food. So I will go over the highlights of the more interesting things. This is what I get for waiting three weeks to update this.
Our trip to the Hague was really nice, I went with two other Americans. We just wandered around the central part of the city looking at buildings and hopping into stores. We found a really large square with many cafes and decided to grab and early dinner there, when we were about finished it started to rain. So we decided we would sit under our umbrella until the rain lightened up because we were pretty unprepared apparel-wise for the rain. After an hour of the rain only getting worse and worse we decided to make a break for it and walk to the train station. After about a five minute walk I could actually wring my pants out, they were soaked. The rain storm was followed by a movie night in with lots of hot tea.
Last weekend my friend who is studying in Paris came to stay, which was a lot of fun! It felt strangely natural to have a friend from Santa Cruz staying with me in Utrecht. On Friday I took her around the downtown area of the city and fed her dutch cuisine such as stroopwafels. We tried to make Dutch pancakes and completely failed, I blame the hot plates and instructions in Dutch. On Saturday we went into Amsterdam. After finding the right train and right tram we arrived at the Van Gogh museum, where we walked right in because we had planned ahead with our tickets. The museum features not only Van Gogh but works by some of his contemporaries. I really enjoyed it, some of the floors were so full of color. We then took a tram to the ferries so we could hop on a ferry to Amsterdam North to my friend Shira's house. There we took a wonderful nap. Then we got some delicious indonesian take out and went out dancing. Sunday after my friend returned to Paris I spent the whole day studying in Shira's house with her and her sister. This week is midterms week, so that is where much of my time has been going. It was so nice to be able to relax in an actual house; I left for Utrecht with a very happy heart and a little homesick for my own parents and sister, but in the best way possible.
I have also been getting more involved on campus. I somehow ended up in a production of Arsenic and Old Lace which should be fun. They needed a minor roll filled and my friend asked me if I wanted to join. I have also become involved with UCTV, our campus tv station. I did UCTV Sunday a week ago last Sunday. We spent the day writing making and editing a short film. At the end of the day we had a screening with the other groups. It was pretty fun, after the midterms break I am going to help make another one for the series called Beyond the Gates. This is a series where we show students that life outside the bubble exists.
I have also started going to a student led yoga class on Wednesday nights, she calls the routine goodnight yoga. It is from 10-1130pm and by the end I am so relaxed that I can just fall straight asleep.
I also celebrated my birthday last week and was shocked by how incredible my friends here are. My unitmates taped balloons with Dutch and English Happy Birthday phrases on them all over, I had some friends show up at midnight with cards and cookies and two of my girlfriends banned together to give me gorgeous boots and flowers. As well as that everywhere on campus I had people stopping me to give me the traditional Dutch three kisses. It was a really nice birthday, I had friends over that night too.
Apart from the actually eventful things that have gone on I have really settled in here, I have been here about two months. I feel relatively comfortable biking in traffic, I understand most of the ins and outs of UC, I am running into less and less moments with Dutch friends where I feel entirely clueless and I can reliably order food without getting thrown by questions such as "for here or to go?" or "would you like cinnamon on that?" I also realized that being in the "bubble" all the time can be stressful, so one of my new favorite things is going off campus to a cafe and just reading a book for fun for an hour or two.
On Friday I am leaving for Berlin where we will stay until Wednesday when we leave for Paris. So expect some pretty exciting news!
No comments:
Post a Comment